Demented Luna
by Glor
Summary: Harry Potter wasn't the only student who caught Dementor's attention during the search for Sirius Black on the Hogwarts Express. Luna Lovegood did as well. Side-story to the First Mission.


**Disclaimer**: The Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. I don't own any of the canon characters.  
_A/N_: This one-shot is technically a part of my FM-verse, so there are some spoilers for the main story.

**Demented Luna**

Luna Lovegood was sitting in her compartment on the Hogwarts Express doing another rune puzzle in _The Quibbler_. She sighed quietly. This train ride was turning out quite like the others before, with most of the students avoiding her for some reason. And those who did come in tended to give her strange looks after exchanging a few phrases and quickly found excuses to go visit their friends in another compartment, conveniently forgetting to return. She had hoped that perhaps her neighbour Ginny Weasley would keep her company this time, but the red-headed girl chose to spend the ride with her brothers Fred and George instead. Then again, she was probably still recovering from the recent ordeal with that cursed diary…

Still, while the situation wasn't new on Luna, she felt disappointed that even the new first-years seemed to keep away from her. She noticed that few of them seemed willing to keep her company at first, but changed their minds after some hushed whispers with some of the older students. She wondered what exactly was being said, but never for a moment considered eavesdropping. It just wasn't right to do so to the potential friends. And making human friends was something she wanted to try for herself, her observations of the other students made it look like fun. And the fact that her father was extremely insistent about her making good friends at Hogwarts was an another incentive.

With the last rune puzzle done, she put the magazine aside, having already read about a failure to capture a living Crumple-Horned Snorkack, and wondered how to spend the remaining time. But before she could go over the available options, the train started to slow down. Luna frowned. It was far too early for them to have reached the station in Hogsmeade. She looked at the window, but the dreary weather outside made it nearly impossible to make out anything.

The train came to a stop with a jolt, and without warning, all the lamps went out, plunging everything into darkness. Luna closed her eyes for a second before opening them again, having adjusted to the shift in lighting. Reaching out for the compartment door, she looked into the dark corridor. A number of other students were doing the same, blindly trying to make way to their friends and asking each other what was going on.

Luna suddenly shivered at the subtle but rapidly increasing drop in temperature and instinctively retreated back into the compartment. Something was _very_ wrong. She heard the students outside rapidly scrambling to hide in their own compartments, and took out her wand just in case. While Professor Lockhart's Defense Against the Dark Arts classes strangely enough didn't include any actual defensive spells, her own knowledge of protective magic was a bit deeper than that of an average Hogwarts student her age.

Then the flow of her thoughts gradually changed direction from magic to how she learned it from her mother to her mother herself, and then she found herself remembering…

_Her mother was standing inside the rune circle, finishing the preparations. Nine year old Luna wasn't paying much attention as she played with her Nargle-repelling charm._

"_There," Annabelle Skylight said. "Now all that's left is to cast the spell."_

"_And then we can go?" Luna asked. The whole thing was pretty boring to her, but it was important to her Mummy, so she sat still and tried not to complain. Besides, Mummy said that this spell would be bright and flashy, and promised to take her to visit Granny Leia after they were done._

"_Oh, almost forgot," Annabelle lowered her wand and took off her silver ring. "Artifacts like this can adversely affect the ritual of this level."_

_She tossed the ring to Luna, who caught it without even trying. "Keep it until we're done with it"._

"_Why you are doing it at all?" the girl whined, giving in to her frustration. "You said they fired you from your job because of it."_

"_Because this spell is very important, sweetie," Annabelle patiently explained. "And if they can't see its value, so much the worse for them."_

_She grew quiet, concentrating. Luna just sighed. Sometimes her mother could be rather stubborn, though not as much as Aunt Florence. This time however was one of those._

'_Just think of it,' she would argue when Daddy tried to dissuade her, 'the power of the Holy Light can help to improve countless lives, take Remus or Xavia to begin with! And I'm not even talking about what it would be like if anyone could ask the Eths for guidance, not just the few of us.'_

"_Step away from the circle, Luna," her mother's voice broke the girl out of her reverie. "Just in case, everything should be fine anyway."_

_As Luna obediently moved to the corner of the laboratory, Annabelle raised her wand._

"_For too long humans and Eths have been divided," she spoke quietly to herself. "Now, matter and Light will come together."_

_Suddenly Luna felt very cold on the inside. Something was very, very wrong. Her vision started to blur._

"No", Luna thought frantically. "No!"

_She found herself unable to move while her mother chanted the incantation in Eth language, but she couldn't hear the words, and she started to feel dizzy._

_The spell started to take effect as Annabelle's wand glowed with bright white-bluish light. The glow then reached her fingers, lit up her palm, then went up to the elbow and further up to the shoulder, enveloping the whole arm and spreading even farther. All the while Luna's vision was fogging with dense grey mist._

_The runes forming the circle started to glow brightly, and the air above shimmered. By this point Luna's vision devolved into a string of static scenes. She saw a burst of tangled magical energies flashing outside the circle. Her mother's horrified face, half of it turned into a swirling mass of light. Her outstretched human hand pointing in Luna's direction. Shimmering blue sphere popping into existence around her. The rest of the laboratory engulfed in ghostly magical flame._

"No! NO!"

_Her mother's body becoming transparent. The tall skeletal figure in black cloak with a transparent scythe._

"_No!" Luna broke through the static, finding her voice. "Don't take my Mummy!"_

_The figure turned in her direction, the blue pinpoints of pupils examining the girl inside the sphere. In desperation, Luna recalled the Arcane Magic lessons she took from her grandmother._

"_Hade! By Highmaster's grace, you leave my mother alone!" she yelled, putting all of her will into the command. The figure shook its skull however._

"**Young one, you cannot stop what is meant to happen. Her time in this world is over. Yours, however, isn't.**_"_

_With it, the entity's 'eyes' flashed._

Luna was shot out of the strangely clingy memory with a gasp, shivering at the icy chill that overtook her body. Looking around, she felt her heart skipping a beat. She was no longer alone in the compartment, but the cloaked figure next to her was the most unwelcome one. The decaying hand protruding from the cloak left no doubt of its identity.

A Dementor!

As soon as the realization set in, however, Luna's shock and distress was suddenly replaced with the surge of fierce protectiveness coming from within. Along came the dazzling memory of her last visit to Eden's antechamber, breaking the shroud of dismay, if only for a second.

As if sensing it, the Dementor recoiled slightly, tentatively raising its hand to the hood of its cloak.

Acting purely on instinct, the girl gripped her charm, forgetting her wand, while concentrating on the already slipping memory.

"_Lux in tenebris! Eth Eru Est!_" she tried to sound commanding, although it came out more like a feeble plea. However, it was more than enough. The monster wheezed in pain before rushing out. The door clicked shut.

Dazed, the girl stood up from the floor, some part of her mind registering that she must've collapsed at some point. Sitting down, she vainly tried to calm herself and collect her thoughts while trying to stop shivering. As the adrenaline subsided, she remembered the simplest remedy to the effect of Dementors, mentioned offhandedly by Aunt Florence few years ago, and reached for one of Chocolate Frogs she bought earlier. It helped, even if she still felt drained from the encounter.

Suddenly the lights turned on, and the train started to move again, slowly regaining speed.

_Why would a Dementor board the train? _Luna wondered in unease. Letting a creature like that on the train full of children with no Auror supervision was asking for trouble, even though it wouldn't dare really attack anyone without direct orders.

She remembered her godfather's words on this topic.

'_Light beings sense light in everyone. And vice versa, the creatures of Darkness detect darkness in the others and shun the light. Dementors, for example, are attracted by the fear and misery which they inspire. This is why they cannot touch a Patronus, the pure light which has no fear of them, or those under the protection of Eths. Though I give them that, they instinctively know most of the time whom they can or cannot attack without repercussions.'_

As she thought over the event, Luna wondered how the other students fared. Hopefully they were alright. She didn't want anything bad to happen to them, even though some of the older Ravenclaws were rather mean to her last year. _Well, perhaps the things will turn for the better this year._

* * *

As the Thestral-drawn carriage she was on approached the gates of Hogwarts, Luna frowned, noticing more Dementors standing guard. The two Ravenclaw students riding with her flinched, eyeing them fearfully.

"Why are they here?" her classmate Sally asked.

"Dunno. I've had enough with just that one on the train. Did you hear, Malfoy said that Potter fainted at the sight of it?" the older boy commented.

"Honestly, I was about to do the same when it came. All that cold…" the girl shivered.

"Did you know that once there was an opposite to Dementors on the Earth?" Luna asked, hoping to strike a friendly conversation. Her hopes were quickly dashed.

"Yeah, I'd sooner believe in winged unicorns," the boy scoffed.

"Actually, winged unicorns do exist," Luna noticed, "I've met one in –"

She broke off. Saying 'Eden's antechamber' was not a good idea in the present company. And probably nor was mentioning that said unicorn could speak and for some reason was quite perplexed when Luna introduced herself to her.

The boy just rolled his eyes at her and so did the other girl. The rest of the ride was spent in an awkward silence.

Luckily, being back at Hogwarts lifted everyone's mood, and even the small run-in with Peeves on the way to the Great Hall didn't dampen it. Professor Dumbledore's announcement about the Dementors bothered Luna though, even if it probably wasn't his decision at all. There was little secret that the Ministry's politics was getting less and less thought out every year. With the Minister turning blind eye to the conspiracies within his office, it was to be expected. Well, at least it was unlikely that any of the students would actually run into Azkaban's guards again.

Going back to Ravenclaw tower after the feast, Luna pondered what riddles would be there this year. She had heard that their complexity depended on the year of the student and looked forward to see if this was true.

Her musings were interrupted by someone nearby mentioning her name. Curiosity piqued, she turned in the direction of a few first-years asking a third-year Michael Corner some question about her. She smiled. He seemed to be an observant if somewhat close-minded boy, and would surely tell them that they should go and talk to her directly. She'd love the chance to finally make some friends…

"Oh, that's just Loony Lovegood," he replied dismissively. "Just ignore her, she's demented."

* * *

A/N: Before anyone asks, Luna isn't hated by everybody. It is just that very few students bother to get to know her past the surface outlook and shallow first impressions, though Luna inadvertently makes it harder for them, hence her reputation. I guess I could've expanded on it, but this WAS intended to be a short story without delving too deep.

Also, in case it was unclear, Luna's vision was a blend of her actual memory and the effect of Dementor.


End file.
